judges, not the trustee, not the fbi, not the doj, took any steps to alter the case of the bankruptcy case. as in the silver blaze case theirs and they was no bark to be heard. to change the status of the bankruptcy case. what's more, the doj specifically declined to pursue criminal charges against judge porteous. in connection to this bankruptcy case. as you know the doj routinely prosecutes bankruptcy issues. finally, none of the porteous' creditors ever made an objection or filed a complaint that they had no problem with this bankruptcy. the porteous', like so many americans, simply became overwhelmed with her mounting credit card debt which is the result of raising kids, and yes, the house managers keep referring to the fact that they gamble. all right, the secret is out. the porteous' gamble. they gamble for recreation. they probably gamble too much.

but that's not illegal. with credit card bills mounting, they sought the help from a bankruptcy attorney that the house managers referred to you earlier, mr. lightfoot. embarrassed about their deteriorating financial situation, they asked mr. lightfoot to help them quote work out restructure their debts. this was an effort to avoid bankruptcy. they worked through the summer and fall of 2000, and the winter of 2001 to avoid the bankruptcy. and then they concluded that they would have to declare bankruptcy, as mr. lightfoot tried to work with the creditors. so figure 2001, it became clear that they had to file for bankruptcy. and like many of us, in that case, and certainly most of the people in bankruptcy, the porteous were shown to be horrible recordkeepers. and obvious a bad money

managers. that's a fairly common trait, by the way, when people declare bankruptcy. they tend to have problems with records in money management. during these discussions, mr. lightfoot proposed the idea that the porteous' file their original bankruptcy petition under the pseudonym or various. let me repeat that. mr. lightfoot proposed that they filed under that name. he has presented testified to that effect. he said it was his idea to avoid embarrassment for the porteous', and for their children. because they didn't want it plastered all over the times they team. the newspaper in 2001 publish weekly names of everyone who sought bankruptcy protection and she was particularly embarrassed by that type of publicity for the family. while most bankrupt defilers enjoy anonymity through this

process, and while so many cases, public figures were and are singled out other bankruptcy filings. as public figures yourself, i'm sure you can understand these filings are examined in excruciating detail. and people love it. they love to read about bankruptcy of famous people. to avoid this, mr. lightfoot proposed that the porteous' file the original bankruptcy petition under the pseudonym, and they also use a p.o. box that mr. lightfoot advised judge porteous to obtain. mr. lightfoot has testified that neither he nor judge porteous ever intended to defraud the court in any of porteous' creditors. there's a evidence that mr. lightfoot proposed a changing of this name for this period because he wanted to assist in a front. his purpose was obvious. and, frankly, was humane. he was trying to protect the family from the initial

embarrassment of bankruptcy. the porteous', however, when they filed as original papers, included their true social security number. those numbers as you here are very important in bankruptcy because that's what is used to track. that's what creditors use to track people in bankruptcy. trustee later stated that he had seen the use of po boxes in other cases, and that since the names were changed before the first knows when to creditors, he said quote no harm, no foul. because what you have to understand is the answers change about 12 days later so no creditors actually got this mature. there were no creditors who were misled. and the trustee himself said look, no harm, no foul. and you also hereby do it in house makes us great deal about the use of p.o. box can you hear

po boxes are used all the time. it is not a violation. but you have a trustee who sang no harm, no foul and house turned around and said maybe no harm, no foul but let's use it to remove the eighth federal judge in the history of the republic. judge porteous, mr. lightfoot filed that admitted complaint in 12 days. correcting the name and address. as a result, no creditor received any notice in connection with the porteous' without full and accurate information. in the end the only party that did not get information for the times picayune was correct, but i was only for a short time and the times picayune quickly began running the very news story that mr. lightfoot and the porteous' wanted to avoid. throughout the bankruptcy process, especially in connection to the decisions about what information to include in these filings, judge porteous relied heavily on

mr. lightfoot. even though he was a federal judge, i think you would understand most federal judges do not have expertise in bankruptcy. the house is further alleged a series of other errors and inaccuracies in the porteous' bankruptcy schedules and materials. the house argues that each of these discrepancies must be part of a dark plan to go off the bankruptcy system for his own game. here again, the facts and we don't support the allegations. and the allegations, even if to by the way, even if you take everything that my colleagues from the house had said, it would still not weren't a basis for removal. the house has cited small omissions of assets to suggest the creditors were defrauded. however, the house never told the house members that the porteous' were in the minority of debtors to successfully complete their bankruptcy. they were in the minority of

debtors who completed their bankruptcy. indeed they provided almost 35% retain them to unsecured creditors, and over $52,000. you will hear from experts, former judges and trustees that this is actually significantly more value to his creditors than would have had a case in a chapter seven liquidation. the house also relied on the fact that judge porteous gave lightfoot is made 2000 pay stub for his income, but he later didn't supply an updated pay stub reflecting a slight increase in salary. what the house did not inform, the house numbers, was that this difference amounted, not just to only about -- specifically, $173.99 per month, but that it had no material impact on the

creditors. who were paid $52,000. moreover, lightfoot file shows that judge porteous did tell him that his net income was 7900 our. he did tell him, he did reveal it to and reveal that it was higher than the earlier pay stub. the heirs work is council and not judge porteous. and by the way, once again, i'm not casting aspersions on mr. lightfoot. these are very small things that happen in bankruptcy. when you have all these receipts coming from people who obvious he had trouble managing their money. likewise, the house side such errors as the bank one account, you just heard about some of this. that had as low as $200 in assets, is somehow a clever design to defraud creditors.

does that track? does that really makes sense? $200? then there's the adobe hosted affiliation account. now, here you didn't just have $200. we can see that. you had $283.42. so let's round it upwards, shall we? let's say it's $300. is that going to be read relied on for the mobile of a federal judge after 16 years of service? whether it's a tax refund check or a single credit card, these problems are routine. that's what these experts are going to tell you. moreover, errors cited by the house members were actually not material to the bankruptcy plan, such as this business of small pre-petition payments that were not listed in the form. house members urge they were pre-petition payments. that you should continue -- considered to in page this judge that the problem is that pre-petition payments are legal under bankruptcy law.

by the house sides entering new dead there is no bark to incurring debt by statute. in this area. it's important to remember that the confirmation order that you hear about was designed to complete, to guarantee completion of the repayment plan. most people don't complete it. the porteous' did. they completed and paid more under that plan. now, throughout these allegations the house mentioned errors and mistakes, but never mentions that those issues had no impact, material impact on creditors who, after all, are the focus of the bankruptcy process. both the porteous' gamble as their primary form of recreation. a practice that judge porteous later stopped with professional help and has resumed since. however, house managers keep on trying to distract the senate as they did the house by disclosing -- without disclosing the louisiana law governing what are

called markers. that's what you will be hearing about. that's a marker. that's what you're going to be hearing about. in the dissent in the '40s case before the fifth circuit, judge dinesen and his colleagues objected to the use of markers as evidence of wrongdoing in bankruptcy matters because, and i quote, under louisiana commercial law, markers are considered checks as defined by louisiana statute. they treat this as an uncashed check. now, should they have continued to gamble? no. but in the end, this continued gambling was not a problem for the creditors of the porteous'. it was a problem for the porteous'. it was a personal problem. and the judge overcame it. we will be creating a record that was never made in the house

on this issue of bankruptcy to you here from professor barkow from university of washington who will explain important differences between chapter seven and chapter 13 bankruptcies that the house appears to have missed in the earlier discussions. he will show airs like these are quite common by both debtors and creditors in bankruptcy cases, and that mistakes in this case created no material harm to creditors. you also hear from united states bankruptcy judge of the northern district of illinois, who is widely cited and respected in his field. this judge will explain how chapter 13 cases developed and how judges, bankruptcy, rely on trustees like the magistrate. he will explain how the bankruptcy code contains no authority for an order barring a debtor from incurring debt after bankruptcy petition.

simple as that. something the house staff just didn't mention to house members. we will also explained that congress has specified that the principal consequence for unauthorized debt is that the debt is simply not dischargeable. that's the consequence. if you have that debt it is not dischargeable. i would say that's significantly different in magnitude than being removed in a senate trial as a federal judge. you also hear that united states, from the estates bankruptcy trustee, hank hildebrand, we are just not calling one, we're calling a separate trustee. magistrate hillebrand is another leader in his field, has worked extensively and his opinions are cited quite widely. you will explain that chapter 13 is a voluntary repayment program and that the most serious problems simply result in the threat of a dismissal of the case.

and that that's what is usually withdrawn as soon as possible as are remedied. he will explain how chapter 13 debtors frequently fail to complete the plan. you will explain that 55% of debtors fail to fulfill the plan. and that the porteouses were in the minority, successfully paying, completing and paying more to the creditors. none of these issues were explained to the house. instead, the house in fees to a federal judge on errors that did not material effect is creditors, did not prevent him from completing his bankruptcy plan or paying creditors than he was originally told. this will take the senate from a standard fighting such crimes as treason to the removal of a judge based on such things as a $200 discrepancy on a credit card. let's move to the last star. as with article two, article 46 judge porteous is removal on the basis of pre-federal contract

going back decades. this time under the guise of a failure to disclose such conduct during confirmation. the standard that the house seeks to impose is frankly absurdly subjective. did judge porteous failed to disclose information that he, judge porteous, thought would be embarrassing to president clinton? assuming judge porteous .gif done nothing wrong or inappropriate, and thus we're going to be presenting evidence about, he national would think it would not be interesting to him or to president clinton. even if the senate comes to the conclusion that judge porteous acted improperly and should have put something of these floating allegations down, it can't conclude that he thought these actions were improper and, therefore, embarrassing without concluding that judge porteous acted with the intent to d.c. there's no basis for that conclusion. the evidence will show that allegations contained in this

article are also completely and demonstrably untrue. i'm not saying challenged. i'm saying untrue. for example, the house specifically and pieced judge porteous on the failure to mention brief conversation he had with louis marcotte. now, you didn't hear this mentioned by the house managers in their presentation, but boy, it was mentioned before. but more importantly, it is in the article. now, the house managers have said that the judge should be impeached because he failed to mention this conversation when he filled out these forms. when he filled out the background form your the only problem is we revealed after the house had impeached this judge, the conversation occurred after the forms were filled out. it was impossible for him to put into these documents a conversation that hadn't

occurred yet. moreover, even if you believe that a judge, when someone like marcotte comes along and says i did a clean bill of health, by the way, the most common fate that bakker witnesses tell nominees, i give you a clean bill of health, even if you believe that there's something wrong with him not immediately picking up the phone and saying i'd like to submit a supplemental filing think this guy just did a clean bill of health, even if you believe that that warrant an impeachment, it couldn't have happened in this case the way the article stated. indeed i believe this is the first impeachment that i know of where a fact contained in an article of impeachment simply did not occur. the embarrassment question, as you know, as senators, is universally answered in the negative by nominees. even though there are many cases

where some embarrassing facts are, in fact, disclose. testimony from experts will show you what the figures are like on this, what the cases are like. but now many routinely omit financial and criminal histories from the background reports. all nations that have occurred literally dozens of high profile cases that resulted in no actions, no action. taken against the nominee. including some cases where interesting facts were revealed before confirmation, and they were confirmed. revealed not by the nominee but they were confirmed. furthermore, the evidence will show that judge porteous' issuance were in line with the other judges. there's a reason why he would say this is a piercing because i did something that all of us in gretna did, not because it was corrupt, but because that was how it was done. it was not illegal. finally, we will show that the

basic allegations contained in article four were known by the fbi and the senate committee before judge porteous' confirmation. this is precisely what the house is owned experts warned could not be the basis for removal. to the pre-federal conduct referred by the house was known at the time of confirmation. we have put into the record proof of that. the house members were never told about before impeachment. once again, this was never discussed or disclosed to the house. we found new evidence before the senate. moreover, not only are curatorships and bonds matters of public record, that judge porteous took no effort to conceal, they were in fact the same records and actions of all of the judges. you will hear testimony from professor mckinsey who is widely viewed not as an aged

come he is the leader in the field. he has numerous books on the confirmation process and background investigations. you hear testimony of the failure to make disclosures, is common among federal nominees with literally dozens of these cases. as senators, we admit we probably don't have to tell you, you deal with it regularly. you have seen countless such questionnaires. and i daresay, i would be surprised if you know of many questionnaires were so unanswered to the embarrassing questions to the negative. but professor mckinsey will come and show you dozens of cases where it was answered in the negative, either before a successful confirmation or after, interesting things were disclosed. not just for judges but also justices. if this could be the basis of removal, think about it. congress could sit on a background questionnaire and simply remove a judge at will for failures to disclose. just bought these things and

find things that you now think he should have thought was embarrassing, and bring them up on the identical article, article four. literally dozens of judges could be removed on the same ground. judges sitting today on the federal court. in this case the house want you to remove a judge on a failure to disclose information that he did not consider relevant or embarrassing when those allegations were already known by the senate and the fbi. in closing, i will note that in only a couple of months of representing judg judge porteoue been able to show fundamental errors, contradictions and withheld evidence in this case. this is the peril of proceeding to an impeachment without a prior criminal trial. that's why congress hasn't all of modern impeachment waiting for a criminal trial. and even if the trial by the

way, what it does give you is a trial record. indeed, late last night we received new evidence long held by the justice department. literally hours before the proceedings began. the record in this case continues to change not by the week, not by the day, but by the hour. i will only submit to you that the impeachment trial should not be works in progress. subject to casual or incomplete disclosures. it's more important than that. indeed, we don't believe today that we received all the material evidence in this case. few senators have been called upon to fulfill this unique role that you have under our constitution. in the end you have to decide whether judge porteous wars the extraordinary action of removal for only the eighth time in the history of this republic. while the fifth circuit sent the

congress this case to consider, for judges took the trouble to write a 49 page opinion warning you, speaking directly to you, that this case would eradicate core constitutional standards that have protected the independence of our court. it should not occur, as some people seem to indicate, simply because everyone is dressed up for an impeachment and it would be a disappointment not to dispatch the accused, it should not occur as the managers suggest because you decided to downgrade the constitutional standard to a type of retroactive job interview. the impeachment standard speaks to all judges. you don't have the option of saying it's close enough for jazz and just remove a judge on innuendo and conflicted fax.

the house cases going to be exposed in this room for the first time to a fully adversarial process. please give us a chance. what remains after all of the house truths and distortions about the way will dictate not just the future of this judge, but the future standard for all judges. we ask only that you, like their predecessors, mind the constitutional line. my colleagues and i are now ready to address these allegations, and we're now ready to present the case in defense of the united states district court judge, j. thomas portis junior.

tomorrow morning is day two for judge thomas porteous. we heard from lawyers who had cases before judge porteous. our live coverage continues at 8:00 a.m. eastern on c span

three. coming up tonight on c. span, mo talks about extending tax cuts. after that, an update on the nuclear reduction treaty. later, we'll have a history of nuclear weapons. host: every weekend on c-span three, experience 48 hours of people and events telling the american story, hear historic speeches by national leaders and events that shaped our nations. visit museums, historical sites, and college campuses. american history t.v. all weekend, every weekend on c-span three. president obama met with fairfax residents outside washington

d.c. he discusses immigration and energy legislation. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. so nice to see you. i'm going to catch everybody. where do you want me to stand? who's in charge here? well, you know what, everybody have a seat. i'll just stand right here. thank you so much, all of you for being here. >> i want to say a special thanks to john and nicole. trevor and olivia are back there. >> they're turning the a/c unit off. >> yes, exactly. that's all right. but i'm so grateful for their hospitality. they are just a wonderful family, and for them to open up their backyard for us is just terrific. so this is really -- oh, i've got a mic.

thank you to the entire family for opening up -- and thanks to all of you for taking the time to be here. because i want to -- i was telling john and nicole that a lot of times, when you're in washington, you're busy, you've got a lot of stuff to do, and you're in a bubble when you're president. sometimes you just don't have the opportunity to have the kinds of interactions that i used to have even when i was a senator. these kinds of formats are terrific for me. my hope is, is that despite all these people who are here with cameras and microphones and all that stuff, that people won't be shy, because the whole point of this is for me to hear directly from you and to answer your questions, hear about your concerns, hear about your hopes, and hopefully that will translate itself into some of the things that we're doing at the white house. i obviously want to make some introductions that -- i think all of you know that you've got some members of congress who are working very hard here in

northern virginia, and i want to acknowledge them. first of all, congressman jim moran, who's been doing great work for a very long time. [ applause ] congressman gerry connolly has been doing terrific work here locally and now on capitol hill. we've got sharon bulova, who is the chairwoman of the fairfax county board of commissioners. [ applause ] we've also got a couple of small business owners, because one of the things i want to talk about is how we can grow the economy and get people back to work, and so who better to hear from than a couple of small business owners. don't worry, i'm not going to call on you, but i'm just glad you're here. first of all, we've got cherrelle hurt, who is the owner of as we grow learning center. hey, cherrelle. thanks for being here. [ applause ] and larry poltavtsev -- did i say that right, larry? -- who is the c.e.o. of target labs, inc.

and so we're glad that you guys could join us. now, i'm only going to say a few things at the top. i want to talk a little bit about why i decided to run for president in the first place, back in 2007-2008. having served as a state senator, having then served as a united states senator, i had had a chance to see how economic policies were having an effect on working-class families and middle-class families for a long time. and my wife and i, we came out of hardworking families who didn't have a lot, but because the economy was growing, because there was an emphasis on what was good for the middle class, we were able to get a great education, we were able to get scholarships. michelle's dad worked as a blue-collar worker, but just on that one salary he was able to provide for his family and make sure that they always had enough and the kids had opportunities.

and what it seemed like was, for about a decade there, middle-class families were losing more and more ground. and some of that had to do with changes in the global economy and greater competition from around the world. but a lot of it had to do with the policies that had been put in place, which really boiled down to cutting taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires, cutting regulations, that made consumers and workers more vulnerable, failing to make investments that were so critical in growing our middle class over the long term. and so when i ran for president, my goal was to make sure that we get a set of economic policies in place that would lay the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st century so that the 21st century would be an american century, just like the 20th century had been. and that's what we've tried to

do over the last 19 months, in the midst of the worst financial crisis that we've seen since the great depression. the first thing we had to do was just stop the bleeding, stabilize the financial system and make sure we didn't trip into a great depression. and we have done that. so when i was sworn in on that very cold day in january, some of you may remember, we lost 750,000 jobs in that month alone. now we've seen eight consecutive months of private sector job growth because of the policies we've put in place. we were on the verge of financial meltdown. anybody who was involved in business at that time remembers banks were not lending at all. you couldn't even get an auto loan or a consumer loan. and now the financial systems have stabilized, although they're not completely where we need them to be. the economy was shrinking at a pace of -- an astounding pace of about 6% annually.

and now the economy has been growing. so we stopped the bleeding, stabilized the economy, but the fact of the matter is, is that the pace of improvement has not been where it needs to be. and the hole that we had dug ourselves in was enormous. i mean, we lost 4 million jobs in the last six months of 2008, when i was still running, we lost 4 million jobs. and all told, we've lost 8 million jobs. and so even though we've grown jobs this year, we haven't been able to yet make up for those 8 million jobs that had been lost. and that's an enormous challenge. now, the second part of the challenge, though, is to make sure that even as we're digging ourselves out of this hole, we start making some better decisions so that long term we circumstance again, and we start creating the kind of economy that's working for middle-class families.

so a couple of things that we did on that front, we cut taxes for middle-class families because we understand that people's incomes and wages have not gone up, have not kept pace with increases in health care, increases in college, and so forth. the second thing that we felt was very important was to start creating some rules of the road again. so in financial services, for example, we passed a financial regulatory bill that makes sure that we're not going to have taxpayer bailouts, makes sure that banks have to operate a little bit more responsibly and take less risks with the money that they're investing. and we also made sure that consumers are treated more fairly, because part of what happened in this financial crisis was people were getting mortgages that they didn't understand. suddenly, the bottom fell out of the housing market and banks found themselves in a crisis situation. so what we've said is let's make sure that consumers know exactly the kinds of mortgages they're

getting. let's make sure that they cannot be steered into these balloon-type payments where there's no chance that over the long term they're going to be able to make their payments. let's make sure that credit card companies have to notify you if they're going to increase your interest rates. and let's make sure that they can't increase your interest rates on your existing balances, only on future balances, so that they're not tricking you into suddenly paying exorbitant fees and putting you in the hole over the long term. gerry likes that one. so we set up a bunch of rules both in the financial services area, in the housing sector and in health care. and i know that a lot of people here heard a lot about the health care bill. one of the most important things that that was about was making sure that insurance companies treated you fairly. so if you've got health insurance, companies are not going to be able to drop you from coverage when you get sick, which is part of what had been happening.

they couldn't deny you insurance because of a preexisting condition or if your child had a preexisting condition, which obviously makes families enormously vulnerable. so a set of rules of the road for how companies interact with consumers, how they interact with workers. and then the final thing that we've tried to do to lay this foundation for long-term economic growth is to put our investments in those things that are really going to make us more competitive over the long term. so we have made the largest investment in research and development, in basic research and science, in our history, because that's going to determine whether we can compete with china and india and germany over the long term. are we inventing stuff here that we can then export overseas? we're making investments in our infrastructure, because we

can't have a second-class infrastructure and expect to have a first-class economy. just an interesting statistic over the last decade. china spends about 9% of its gross domestic product on infrastructure. europe spends about 5%. we've been spending 2%. and that's part of the reason why we no longer have the best airports, we no longer have the best rail systems, we don't have the best broadband service. south korea has better broadband service and wireless service than we do. and over time, that adds up. it makes us less competitive. so what we've said is we've got to make investments in infrastructure. a third area, education. a generation ago, we had the highest proportion of college graduates of any country in the world. we now rank 11th or 12th in the proportion of college graduates.

well, we can't win in an information society, in a global, technologically-wired economy, unless we're winning that battle to make sure our kids can compete. so what we've said is we're going to put more money into higher education and through k-12, but here's the catch, the money is only going to those communities that are serious about reforming their education system so they work well. because it's -- education is not just a matter of putting more money into it. you also have to make sure that we've got the best teachers, that we've got accountability, that the way we're designing our schools help our kids actually succeed over the long term, especially in areas of math and science, where we're lagging even further behind than we were a generation ago. so those are the things that we've been trying to do over the last 19 months. now, as i said before, the economy is growing, but it's not

growing as fast as we would like. so over the last week, i've put forward a few more things that i think can really make a difference. number one, instead of giving tax breaks to companies that are investing overseas, which our tax code does right now, what i've said is let's close those tax loopholes and let's provide tax breaks to companies that are investing in research and development here in the united states. that's a smart thing to do. we want to incentivize businesses who actually are making profits right now to say, we should go ahead and take a chance, and let's invest in that next new thing. second is, what i've proposed is, is that we allow companies to write off essentially their new investments early if they make those investments here in 2011, so essentially accelerating the depreciation that they can take on their taxes to encourage them to frontload making investments now.

the third thing that we've proposed, and this is actually pending right now in the senate, the united states senate, because gerry and jim have already voted on it, is a small business package that would eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, would help small businesses obtain loans. it is a common-sense bill that traditionally would have garnered a lot of bipartisan support, but we're in the political silly season right now so it's been blocked up by the senate republicans for the last month and a half, two months. small businesses are still having trouble getting loans. and what we want to do, even though we've already given them eight different tax breaks, is we want to say we're going to give you just a little bit more incentive, because if we can get small businesses growing and investing and opening their doors and hiring new workers, that's probably going to be the area where we can make the most progress over the next year in

terms of accelerating employees and reducing the unemployment rate. so these are all steps that we're taking right now to try to move the economy forward. now, i have never been more confident about the future of our economy, if we stay on track and we deal with some of these longstanding problems that we hadn't dealt with for decades. if we make investments and improve our education system, if we make investments in research and development, if we make investments in things like clean energy so that we've got an energy policy that's not just tied to importing oil from the middle east, but instead start figuring out how can we develop our homegrown industries, if we have a tax system that is fair and helps the middle class, and that also attends to our long-term deficit problems, if we regulate, but not with a

heavy hand, just regulate enough to make sure that we don't have a collapse of the financial system and consumers aren't taken advantage of and health insurance companies are responsive to ordinary families, no reason why we cannot succeed. and i've travelled all around the world and i've looked at all the economic data. if you had a choice of which country you'd want to be, you still want to be the united states of america. we still have a huge competitive edge and we've got the best workers in the world. and we've got the most dynamic economy in the world. we've got the best universities, the best entrepreneurs in the world. but we've got to tackle these longstanding problems that have been getting in the way of progress, and we've got to do it now. we cannot wait another 20 years or another 30 years because other countries are catching up. that's what we've been trying to do over the last two years. now, some of these things, i got to admit, are hard.

they cause great consternation. when we tried to get some common-sense rules in the financial sector, for example, that means billions of dollars that were going to profits to some of the banks are not going to be going there because you're getting a better deal on your credit card, and they're not happy about it. so that ends up creating a lot of drama on capitol hill. and it means that we've had some very contentious debates. but i just want to close by saying this. ultimately, when i get out of washington and i start talking to families like yours, what i'm struck by is not how divided the country is, but i'm actually struck by how basically people have common values, common concerns and common hopes. they want to be able to find a job that pays a decent wage,

give their family and their children, in particular a bright future, be able to retire with some dignity and respect, not get bankrupt when they get sick. and that cuts across region, it cuts across racial lines, it cuts across religious or ethnic lines. people -- there's a core set of american values that i think people across the country respond to. what i want to do is make sure that the government is on the side of those values, of responsibility and hard work and thinking about future generations and not just thinking about the next election. and i think we've made progress, but we've got more progress to make. so with that, i thank you all for being here. and what i want to do is i just want to answer questions. and i know folks in the sun are hot, so i'm going to stand in the sun to make sure that you know that i feel -- [laughter] -- i feel your pain, as they -- absolutely. i wouldn't mind having that hat,

though. [laughter] that's helpful. i should have thought ahead. all right, anybody want to -- john, go ahead. yes. here, hold on a second. i'll give you a mic, so -- oh, we've got one. >> mr. president, thank you very much for coming. we really appreciate it. it's a great opportunity. i'm an engineer. and you talked a lot about r&d and infrastructure and i love every dollar spent on that, by definition. i'm also a paraplegic. and i have a great interest in stem cell research and how it gets furthered. so how do we get this issue to be a scientific issue instead of a political issue? >> well, john, as you know i have been a huge supporter of stem cell research for a very long time. when i came into office, we said that what's going to govern our decision-making here is sound science. there are legitimate ethical issues involved in all this -- the biotech industry, and those

are going to continue as time goes on. i mean, there are some very tricky questions. and we've got to make sure that our values and our ethical standards are incorporated in everything we do. but we've also got to make sure that we're making decisions not based on ideology, but based on what the science is. now, the executive order that i signed would say that we are not going to create embryos to destroy for scientific research. we're not going to do that. on the other hand, when you've got a whole bunch of embryos that were created because families were trying to -- couples were trying to start a family, and through in-vitro fertilization, they're frozen in some canister somewhere, and are going to be discarded anyway, then it makes sense for us to

take those that are going to be destroyed and use them to advance our scientific knowledge to see if at some point we can start making huge progress on a whole set of issues. obviously, spinal cord injuries are an example, but parkinson's disease, alzheimer's disease, diabetes, juvenile diabetes. there's not a single family here who has not in some way been touched by a disease that could end up benefiting from the research that's done on stem cells. now, recently a district court judge said that not only -- well, essentially said that our executive order he felt went too far beyond what the guidelines that congress had provided before i came into office. although, the way he had written the order, it made it seem like even bush's orders were out of line and that you have to stop stem cell research altogether. we are appealing that. we're challenging it.

and what we're going to keep on doing on a whole range of these decisions is to make sure that i'm talking to scientists and ethicists and others, and try to build a common-sense consensus that allows us to make progress over the long term. ok? go ahead. >> mr. president, it's a privilege for me to be here. you talk about the small business loans. my company is a high-tech company. and we are growing, and we are providing high-tech jobs for americans. how can we ensure that banking and lending institutions are going to actually lend money to small businesses? there have been numbers of steps done in that way, but so far i've been denied a loan twice and only got the -- for the third time after i asked for

s.b.a.-backed loan. >> right. tell me more about your business, by the way. i've actually read about it. but tell -- people here i think would be interested, because you're working on clean energy issues. >> this is correct, yes. i have two lines of business, clean energy part where we are actually trying to get companies to become green and change their practices so that they follow a sustainability practice as the regular ways. and the second part of my business is high-tech. we are doing i.t. consulting and i.t. services for federal government and fortune 500 companies. >> how many employees do you have right now? >> about 94. >> 94? >> yes. >> well, look, part of the answer is what you already spoke about, which is s.b.a., the small business administration. we have doubled the number of small business loans that we've been giving through the s.b.a.

we've waived a lot of fees on those loans because we knew that small businesses were getting harder hit than just about anybody during the financial crisis. they were the ones where the banks were pulling back the most. so we tried to fill that void as the banks were getting well, making sure the small businesses could keep their doors open. but even by doubling the number of s.b.a. loans, there's still not enough capital to meet all the demand for small businesses across the country. that's why this bill that we're looking to pass this week out of the senate, and that gerry and jim already voted for, is so important, because what it would do is it would take funding authorization to provide to community banks who are most likely to give loans to small businesses, but it would say to those banks, you know what, we're going to hold you accountable for actually lending the money. because what we don't want to do is just help the banks boost their balance sheets, but they're never getting the money out of the door.

over the long term, we think that there are going to be enormous opportunities for banks to make money with businesses like yours, because yours are the ones that grow. but they're still feeling gun-shy because of what happened on wall street. and in fairness to a lot of the community banks, they weren't the ones who were making big bets on derivatives, but they were punished nonetheless. they've been hit really hard in the housing market. they've been hit on their portfolios. they've been trying to strengthen their portfolios. but when we provide these loan guarantees through the s.b.a., or we provide cheaper money to them that they can then lend out, and as long as we're monitoring them to make sure that they actually lend those monies to small businesses, they're the ones that are most likely to get that money out the door. this bill is very important. it has been held up now for a couple of months, unnecessarily.

there was an article in the "usa today" just about three weeks ago that said small businesses were actually holding off on hiring because they weren't sure whether some of these tax cuts that they were going to get, as well as some of these lending facilities, would actually be set up. and you hear some of my friends on the republican side complaining that, well, we'd get more business investment if we had more certainty. well, here's an example where we could give some certainty right away. pass this bill. i will sign it into law the day after it's passed or the day it is passed. and then right away i think a lot of small businesses around the country will feel more comfortable about hiring and making investments. >> this is what's happening right now is that, you know, i have contracts and i am ready to hire 20 more people. >> right. >> but nobody is going to give me additional loans right now. i mean, i had an off-the-record

conversation with the vice president of one bank and they said, it's simply we've made a decision not to loan to small businesses, it's simply more profitable to us to invest this money elsewhere. >> well, that's why it's so important to make sure that if they are getting help from us in terms of having more money to lend, that they actually lend it out and they lend it to small businesses. and we've got to make a direct link between the help that they're getting and them actually lending the money. that's going to be critical. all right, who's next? yes, over here. >> i'm john's sister, wendy. >> hey, wendy. how are you? >> i'm so honored and delighted to be here. thank you. >> you must be john's younger sister. >> yes, definitely, definitely. >> that's what i figured. >> no, he's my kid brother. and i actually am the stringer in from boston with that hockey team you're meeting with this afternoon. >> there you go. yes, i've been looking forward to congratulating them. >> i would tell you just a little story, which is when i was in high school here at woodson high school, i got

involved in historic preservation. i worked on an archeology dig. i researched the history of an old house. i helped move the one-room legato schoolhouse from out in the country into town hall to restore it as a piece of our county's history. that launched my lifelong career is historic preservation. and so i guess -- and i know you are interested in history and have studied particularly, i think, i've read, president lincoln and the way he created a cabinet and so on. so i know you value our nation's history. and i guess my question for you is what are your thoughts about what we're doing in your administration to invest in preserving our nation's history and our historic places? and one little job-generating idea i'd give you is that all the studies show that renovating

existing buildings, restoring historic buildings is more labor-intensive than materials intensive. it creates more jobs. they're local jobs for local people. so i hope that might be part of your jobs strategy. >> well, i am a huge booster of historic preservation. if i wasn't, michelle would get on me because she used to actually, in chicago, used to be on the historic -- on the landmark commission there. and we live in a landmark district in chicago. so this is something that we care deeply about. i guess i'd broaden the point to say that not only should we be thinking about historic preservation, but we should also be thinking about our national parks, our national forests. there's this treasure that we inherited from the previous generation, dating back to teddy

roosevelt. and that requires us to continually renew that commitment to our historic structures and our natural resource base, so that when trevor and olivia and those guys have their kids, when you guys have your grandkids, that that stuff is there for them, too. so we have actually tried to ramp up our commitment to these issues. we've, where we can, put a little bit more money into it. but a lot of it's not just more money, it's also more planning. and the recovery act gave a range of grants to state and local governments in some cases around preservation issues. now, one point -- one other

point i want to make, though, renovation oftentimes will actually generate more jobs than new construction. a related idea is what we can do to make our existing buildings and housing stock more energy efficient, because it turns out that we could probably cut about a third of our total energy use just on efficiency. we wouldn't need new technologies. we wouldn't need to invent some fancy new fusion energy or anything. if we just took our existing building stock in homes and insulated them, had new windows schools, hospitals, a lot of big institutions, we could squeeze huge efficiencies out of that. there's a lot of ways to be had, and that would benefit everybody. it would mean that over time we were helping to save the planet by reducing our carbon footprint.

people would be paying less on their electricity bills and their heating bills and their air-conditioning bills. so it helps consumers. the problem -- the reason we haven't done more of this is because it requires some capital on the front end. i mean, a lot of school districts, for example, would love to retrofit their schools, but they're having problems just keeping teachers on payroll right now, so they always put off those investments. and one of the things that we tried to do through the recovery act, and something that i know that gerry and jim have been interested in, is something called home star that we've been working on, is to essentially provide families as well as small businesses, as well as institutions like schools or hospitals, grants up front, where we say, all right, we're going to give you $10,000 to retrofit your building or your house.

then you're going to pay us back through your savings on utilities over a five-year period, for example, so that over time, it doesn't cost taxpayers a lot of money, but we're essentially giving some money up front that's going to then be recouped. i think there are a lot of ideas that we can pursue on that front that could really make a difference and put a lot of people back to work, whether they're the folks selling the insulation at home depot, or the small contractor that for a long time was remodeling kitchens or putting in home additions, maybe that business has dried up. this would be a new area for them to get put to work. and about one out of four construction, one out of four jobs that have been lost during this recession are related to the construction industry in some fashion. those folks have been hit harder than just about anybody else. this would be an important boost for them. >> if i could add to that, just one thing, which is, it's really not necessary to replace the

windows to get that energy efficiency. didn't somebody write about the caulking gun? >> caulking is -- >> it's a lot less expensive. >> absolutely. cash for caulkers. good point. all right, gentleman right there. >> mr. president, my name is mark murphy. i'm a neighbor of john and nicole. welcome to our neighborhood. >> thank you. it's a beautiful neighborhood. . .

>> a little bit of background for those who are not as familiar with that. the employee free choice act is in response to 20 or 30 years where it has become more and more difficult for unions to get a fair election and to have their employers actually negotiate with them. the laws that have been on the books have gotten more difficult

to apply. a lot of times, companies who may be good employers just do not want the bother of having a union. they will work very hard to make sure the union does not develop. they will drive out the process for very long time. -- drag out the process for a very long time. in some cases, workers who werae joining unions or who want to join unions or who helped organize one may be intimidated. the idea behind the employee o free choice act is to make the playing field even. we do not have to force anyone to join the union, but if they want to, let's make it easier for them to sign up. the answer -- short answer to your question is, we're

supportive of this. frankly, we do not have 60 votes in the senate. the opportunity to actually get this passed is not high. what we've done instead is to do as much as we can administratively to make sure that it is easier for unions to operate and that they are not being placed at an unfair disadvantage. let me speak more broadly, though, about the point that you made. some of the things we take for granted came about because of the unions -- minimum wage, 40- hour work week, labor laws. you name it. weekends. a lot of these things came about because people were fighting for them. it was not automatic or natural. the other thing that unions did, particularly in manufacturing, was give a base for blue-caller workers to get a middle-class wage -- blue-collar workers to get a middle-class wage. it essentially meant the guys working at the ford plant could

afford to buy a ford. it increased demand. it meant that businesses had more customers and had more money. we now live in an era of international competition and that makes it harder for business. we should knowledge that the -- acknowledge that the business environment now is much more competitive than it was back in the 1960's or 1970's. technology has made it more difficult for businesses to compete. transportation has made it more difficult to compete. the costs for shipping big goods from china to the united states or high-volumes from asia to the united states is a lot cheaper than it was. we have to be sympathetic to business concerns that they do not get priced out of the market if they are competing internationally. i think the best way to balance that is to make sure the business interests here in the united states and labor

interests -- workers' interests are aligned. make sure that businesses are looking after their workers and giving them a good deal. workers and unions also have to think about businesses and not put them in a position where they are priced out of the marketplace. i think that balance is tilted way too far against unions these days. i think that, actually, if we had some of these businesses with employees who were there for a longer term or who were more loyal, not worried about their jobs being shipped overseas, that would actually be good for the economy as a whole and good for businesses. we have to of knowledge that competition means that businesses and workers -- have to acknowledge that competition means that businesses and workers have to be it better- skilled, leaner, meaner, and we have to constantly invent more stuff so that we're working on

high-end jobs not the lower. the low-end jobs -- we're never goign to -- going to be able to compete on the basis of price. there will always be a country -- wages are starting to go up all little bit in china. the next will be vietnam or bangladesh. there will always be some place in the world where they pay lower wages. our vantage is if we have higher skills, a workforce that works together more effectively, businesses that are better organized. if we have that, we can compete against anybody. a good example is actually germany, which has a much higher rate of unionization than we do, but they have actually been able to continue to export at very high levels and compete around the world because they have such a highly-skilled work force putting together high-end products that can compete with anybody.

right over here. mike is coming -- the mic is coming. >> hello, mr. president. it's a n honor. i'm so nervous. >> don't be nervous. >> i'm so nervous. i love everything you are doing. i love your vision. i am so glad you got into office. i love the health care reform. where i come from, when we havd to go to the doctor, we go to the doctor. if we need surgery, we get surgery. when i came here, i found out about insurance and this and that. i could never afford that on the salary i may. -- make now. my husband is in the construction business. hopefully that will come back. i work for fairfax county public schools. i have not had a raise in two years and i may not even have a job next year. i hear it is going to get worse before it gets better.

do you agree with that? i know it is starting to improve, but how long do you think this is going to take? it sounds wonderful. >> first of all, you have a better chance of keeping your job in the public-school systems now because jerry and jim voted to close a pretty egregious tax loophole that was incentivizing jobs going overseas and even some corporations who stood to benefit thought it was ridiculous. they closed that loophole in order to fund teacher jobs and police officer jobs and firefighter jobs all across the country. that has been very helpful in assisting some strapped school districts. the economy is improving. one of the headwinds that the economy is experiencing is actually that state and local governments who have been

getting really hit hard. we give states a lot of help at the beginning of this crisis because their budgets were just imploding. typically, state and local government get hit faster by declines in tax revenues. they rely on property taxes. with the housing market collapsing, that was really hitting them hard. they were looking at possibly plashing -- flashing 30% of jobs in -- slashing 30% of jobs in school districts. the most effective way from preventing the great depression was getting them help. the problem is that some of that help is running out. property-tax revenues have not yet improved. sales tax revenues have not

improved get as much as they would like. local districts, states are still having big budget problems. they probably will have those next year. the challenge we have is, ironically, if you start laying off a whole bunch of teachers or a whole bunch of police officers or firefighters -- they do not have a job. they spend less. there is less tax revenue. it is a vicious, downward spiral. that is why the steps that we took were so important. i have to say, this is an example of where you have a fundamental disagreement between republican leadership and democrat. john boehner, who wants to be the speaker -- next speaker of the house if the republicans take over, specifically said, these are just government jobs. they are not worth saving.

he voted no on closing the tax loophole that was in some that -- that was incentivizing jobs going overseas. it is just not smart from an economic perspective for us to allow jobs in the united states to go away while we are giving tax revenue away to companies creating jobs somewhere else. it does not make sense. we're going to continue to have some of these battles over the next couple of years. frankly, i think that how state and local garments can deal with these budget challenges will depend in part on -- local governments deal with these budget challenges will depend in part on how people making the decisions got -- will depend in part on which people are making these decisions. i like these guys better. that is just my unbiased opinion. >> mr. president, thank you so much for visiting us here.

it is quite an honor. i think my question is a good segue. we do face a political environment that has changed a lot since you were elected. with the upcoming midterm elections, you can expect a lot of new faces in congress. a lot of new representatives and senators have been elected on platforms that are really opposed to government intervention in the economy. what is your plan for working with the new congress to make sure that we get the actions that you see are necessary to end this recession? what do you see as common ground with the republicans in congress -- some solutions that can bring the recession to an end? >> well, let me just say that i do not believe in wholesale government intervention in the economy. my starting point is that, what

makes us the most wealthy and and and the country on earth is the free-market system -- most dynamic and wealthy country on earth is the free-market system. what stars off -- starts off as a small business, aol, facebook, it revolutionizes our economy and becomes a large company. that is our strength. that is the starting point where republicans and democrats should be able to come together. we all believe in that. there are some fundamental differences. at the beginning of the crisis, for government not to intervene when the financial system was on the verge of a meltdown and we were shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, the credit markets closing completely, for us not to

intervene would have been simply irresponsible. it would have been irresponsible. i do not know an economist -- democrat or republican -- who would suggest otherwise. it would have been simply irresponsible. some of the steps we had to take had to do with emergency situations. a great example is the auto industry. when we decided to intervene -- keep this in mind. we have been bailing out the industry for years under the previous administration. the difference is we had never asked them for anything in return. they kept on going with their bad practices, creating cars that, frankly, in this kind of energy environment, were not the cars of the future. they never change their practices. what we said was, we're going to help you by restructuring. we're going to bring the stakeholders together -- workers, management, shareholders -- and if

taxpayers are going to help you out, you have to change how you do business. they have. they emerge from bankruptcy and now all three u.s. automobile companies are operating at a profit. if we had not taken that step, we would have lost 1 million jobs in that industry. ford might have survived. gm and chrysler would definitely not have. the ripple effects on the economy would have been devastating. sometimes you make these decisions not because you believe in government intervention, but because there is a crisis that he must respond to -- you must respond to. right now we have disagreement on taxes. jim, jerry, the bass for a majority of democrats -- the vast majority of democrats think that because wages have declined for middle-class families making less than $250,000 per year that those

families should get an extension of the tax cuts that were instituted in 2001 and 2003. keep in mind that if you make more than $250,000 per year, you would still get a tax cut, but it would only be up to the first to leonard $50,000 per year. -- $250,000 per year. it would be the first quarter of your income if you made $1 million. after that, it goes back to the rates when bill clinton was president. we had 22 jobs created, faster income and wage growth -- we had much more job growth. we had faster income and wage growth. the economy was humming pretty good. we could get that done this week, but we're still in this

wrestling match with john boehner and mitch mcconnell about the last 2% to 3% where we would be giving them $100,000 for people making $1 million or more. in an of itself, that would be ok, except to do it, we would have to borrow $7 billion over the course of 10 years and we just cannot afford that. i wanted to lay out the differences before i talk about where we can work together. where we have a great opportunity to work together is on the issue of our long-term debt. our big challenge right now is creating jobs and making sure the economy takes off. the steps that we a been taking, including -- we have been taking, including cutting taxes for small businesses, providing loans, they can cost money, but are wise investments because our number one focus has

to be jobs, jobs, jobs and encouraging business investment. on the horizon, in the middle- term and long-term, we have a very real problem with the debt and deficits. i have to say that a lot of people who are under arrest -- i have to say that i understand the people who are upset. the people who are rallying. i do understand people's legitimate fears about are we talking our future because we are borrowing so much -- talking -- hocking our future because we are borrowing so much? i understand their concerns. they saw all of these -- they see all of these numbers adding up.

they are right to be concerned. there's an opportunity for democrats and republicans to come together and say, what are the tough decisions we need to make right now that will not squashed the recovery, will not lead to huge numbers of layoffs, constrict to much too early -- constrict too much too early? how we get on a trajectory wherewe're starting to bring our debt and deficit slowly and to control. i set up a bipartisan fiscal commission that is designed to come up with answers. they're supposed to report back to me after the election. that was on purpose. we said do not give us the answer before the election because nobody will have an honest answer. everybody will posture politically. when the election is over, report to us, and let's see if

democrats and republicans can come together to make tough decisions. they are going to be tough decisions. people, i think, have a sense that if we just eliminated a few pork projects and foreign aid that we would somehow solve our debt. the big problem with our debt is actually the cost of medicare and medicaid, our health care system. it is by far the thing that is exploiting -- exploding faster than anything. the population is getting older and using more health care services. if we do not take control of that, we cannot control our long-term debt. that is why health care reform is so important. we're trying to rationalize and make the system smarter. we have to look at the other pieces -- defends, food stamps. -- defense, food stamps. we have to see what we can reduce our costs over the long- term. we cannot give away money and think that we will balance the

budget. it is not going to happen. that is one area where we can make progress. i hope we can make progress on energy. everybody agrees that our energy policy makes no sense. we do not have an energy policy. we have talked about it since richard nixon. opec, 1973 -- the oil lines -- the lines at the gas station. every president has said this is a national security issue. this is a crisis. but we do not do anything about it. my suggestion is let's join hands, democrats and republicans, and take the lead to try to solve the problem. -- take a leap to try to solve the problem. there is no magic solution. we will have to use a bunch of different strategies. efficiency has to be a huge push. with respect to the transportation sector, one

thing we did without legislation that nobody has really noticed -- we increased fuel-efficiency standards on cars and trucks for the first time in 30 years. we got the car companies and the autoworkers to agree to it, not just the environmentalists. that is goign to -- going to help. we have to look at nuclear energy. historically, a lot and harmless -- alighted environmentalists have said they do not like nuclear and it -- a lot of environmentalists have said they do not like nuclear energy. but it is a fuel source that the japanese and french have been using much more intelligently than we have. we have huge reservoirs of natural gas that are relatively clean. we have to use them in an environmentally-sound way. that is an area where i think we can still, hopefully, make some progress. the last thing i will say --

some people disagree with me on this. they think it is too incendiary, too politically difficult. i think we need to reform our immigration system. we should be able to find a way that secures our borders and provides people who are already here a pathway so that they're out of the shadows paying -- out of the shadows, paying a fine, learning english, getting assimilated, but not living in fear. we should be able to do that. we have 11 senators -- 11 republican senators who could vote for it. john mccain was a cosponsor of the bill. we should be able to get that done again. everybody agrees that the system is broken. i also want to mention education. this has been one of the few

areas where i have actually gotten some compliments from republicans. i think that the strategy that we have right now which is to maintain high standards, work with states in a smart way to develop curriculum, teacher- training -- teacher-training strategies, to boost our higher education institutions -- that is an area where we should all agree. it is indisputable that, if we're working smarter, if our kids are better-trained, we will succeed. if we do not, it does not matter what we do it because we will decline. i have time for one more question. i will call on this young lady right here. >> i am really nervous. thank you, mr. president, for being here. there are a lot of people sending you a lot of good

energy. one thing might 82-year-old aunt -- when thing is my -- one thing is my 82-year-old aunt wanted me to tell you hi. i am a massage therapist. >> i have a crick in my neck. >> i bet you do. >> a lot of tension has been building up. >> do you get regular massage? >> go ahead, go ahead. >> one thing i hear often is fear. on an energetic level, what i would like to see you get started, bipartisan, is to alleviate people's fears of spending $5. i know this sounds basic. if we go out there and spend a little bit, it will come back around. it works.

you have a program where you have -- you are giving a tax break to those companies that hire returning vets. a $2,400 tax break. who are those companies? i would patronize those companies who are making the effort to hire these people. you have to spend it to get it back. there is a prevailing fear all the time. it comes down to $5, $10, whatever. you have to put it out there and it will start the momentum going. >> look, i think you're absolutely right that some of this is psychology. the country went through a huge trauma. the body politic is like an individual in the sense that, if they move through a really bad accident and you are in a

cast. you have some whiplashed. -- whiplash. you are bruised and battered. it takes time to recover. we went through a really bad accident. it was a preventable one, by the way. if we had had some more rules of the road in place and better economic policy, we could have prevented it. it is what it is. you're absolutely right that part of what is holding us back is thus needing to go ahead and feel confident about the future -- is us needing to go ahead and feel confident about the future. that's not the only thing holding us back. let's be realistic.

some people are maxed out on their credit cards. people have said, quite sensibly, this is a good time for us to reflect on the fact that we were buying a bunch of stuff that we were not quite there yet. we should pay down our debt. people have been paying down their debt a lot more over the last year than they had in the previous five or 10 years. a lot of people were borrowing against their homes in home- equity loans. when people talk about us, i think they forget that we were, basically, living the same lives. it was only six or seven years ago. i still remember the first time

i refinance our condo. -- refinanced our condo. initially, we had gotten higher rates. we bought in 1993. sometime around 1997 -- i do not remember exactly -- the rate had gone down a couple of percentage points. i thought it would make sense to refinance. i remember talking to the bank and they said, you can refinance and you can take some money out. i said, what does that mean? they said, your condo has appreciated so much that you can take -- it is like found money. i remember thinking, that does not sound right. but that was -- everybody was so certain that homes were appreciating and they would always appreciate. everybody felt richer. holmes suddenly started dropping in value.

you don't -- homes suddenly started dropping in value. you don't have that kind of equity. you know longer feel as wealthy. 401k's dropped. there are legitimate and real reasons why people have pulled back. i want to end on the public that you were making. -- the point that you were making, which is that we have averted the worst. the economy is now growing. there are enormous opportunities out there. there are people who are inventing stuff that will be the new products of the future all across this country. there are young people who, when i meet them, they are talented, energetic, and they feel confident about america. if you travel overseas, as tough as this recession has been

for us, the truth of the matter is that most countries still envy the united states. there are billions of people around the world who would die to be here and have the opportunity to prosper and be part of this great middle-class of ours. what can republicans and democrats do together after this election? stop spending so much time attacking the other side spirit spend more time -- side. spend more time thinking about the opportunities we have. if we can do that, i am absolutely confident that we will move forward for a long time to come. thank you so much, everybody. god bless you. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> right. that is why we have to get this bill passed. we're going to. >> thank you. it is nice to meet you. thank you for coming. >> how are you? is this your husband? >> are you retired or still working? i tell you what, that is why you have a smile on your face. thank you so much. what kind of work did you do? >> [inaudible] >> you? >> [inaudible] >> wonderful. tell everybody hi. i very much appreciate what you have done. >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you.

>> hang in there. >> thank you very much. >> how are you? >> what's your name? >> lynn. i am a mom. >> that is hard work. how old are your kids? >> 11, 9, and 7. my daughter broker her ar-- broke her arm. my mom says she loves you. my dad says good job on health care. >> thank you. how are you? good to see you. that is important. keep up the great work. thank you.

good to see you. thank you. how about you? >> [inaudible] >> what kind of business? >> [inaudible] >> let him know malia is getting serious about tennis. she is built for it. she is built like venus. [inaudible] >> this is for your family. [inaudible] >> these are tickets to visit their house. [laughter] >> my daughters. >> i can take the letter. -- them letters. >> she's canadian, too.

>> thank you. what kind of work do you do? [inaudible] >> good to see you. [inaudible] we have plenty of room to grow.

[inaudible] >> we go through ups and downs. thank you for your time. >> good tos ee you aga -- to see you again. [inaudible] that is going to be huge. they are doing great work. one of the things about infrastructure is because demand was down, we are actually coming in under budget. people are working faster than they ever have. we get more bang for our buck. >> [inaudible] thank you so much for explaining. >> i just have to do more of these, obviously. [laughter] >> one at time. -- one at a time. [inaudible]

>> i wish that [inaudible] >> they knew it wouldn't be popular, but they did the right thing. [laughter] [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> president obama, what you -- do you think the chances are of getting a compromise on the bush tax cuts? >> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> c-span's local content vehicles are traveling around the country as we look at some of the most closely-contested house races leading to the midterm elections. >> first and foremost is the idea that right now we have to

have a bold agenda for american jobs. a lot of what i have spent the last year and a half doing is trying to get washington, both parties, doebele little more focused -- to be a little more focused. instead, they have been focused on the banking and financial system. >> the candidates running in the virginia race are tom perriello, a freshman democrat who was elected in the wave of victories during obama's victory in 2008. against him is challenger robert hurt, a republican state senator from virginia. and jeff clark, a tea party member and independent businessman from the danville area. the virginia's 5th congressional district race is getting a lot of attention. republicans see perriello as one

of the most vulnerable democrats in congress. he has voted in favor of obama's major initiatives -- health care, cap and trade, stimulus. two years ago, he was elected by the smallest margin of any congressional race in the country. they think that -- the republicans see this as a pickup. democrats however say that tom perriello is a fighter. he is a very tough campaigner. because he supported those same initiatives, he is getting the support of national democrats, just as national republicans are trying to take him down. in 2008, perriello, a young lawyer from the charlottesville area, challenged the six-term conservative republican and beat him by 727 votes -- the closest margin of any race that year in congress. some people say the perriello just rode in on the obama wave.

while that was a factor. the district is fairly conservative. mccain won with 56.6% of the vote. is less of a republican stronghold, but it is still a conservative district that is represented by democrat. virginia's 5th congressional district is the size of new jersey. it is a triangular shape. it is home to university of virginia and his fellow -- monticello. it includes the cities of martinsville, danville, and part of lynchburg. the economy has hit the district fairly hard. martinsville has been hit extremely hard.

unemployment topped 20%. it is bad, but not quite as bad as elsewhere in the district. there is unemployment continuing to be a problem throughout the district. there have been a number of foreclosures, obviously. people who have their jobs are -- their pay has stagnated for the last several years. it is a big problem here. tom perriello is certainly a moderate democrat. on some of these big-ticket priorities of president obama and the democrats, he votes in favor -- things like health care reform, cap and trade, clean- energy, the economic stimulus. some people say he is a liberal democrat because he has supported the big-ticket items. on the other hand, he has broken with his party on some cases.

he does not believe that the assault weapons ban should be reinvented. he is a strong believer in second amendment rights. he voted against both the president obama's budgets because he felt they did not go far enough in curtailing the federal deficit. robert hurt is more of a traditional conservative. he has been in the assembly for a number of years. he has been and there -- endorsed by the family foundation and the nra. he is a big part -- a big part of his message is the federal government spending is out of control. government regulations have gotten too onerous. if he was elected, he would work for lower tax burdens for businesses and individuals. in the legislature, his record has been mixed. while he has been a hard r in

the legislature, he did vote for $1.4 billion tax increase to balance the state's budget. he took a lot of heat for that at the time and during the republican primary this year as well. jeff clark running against not only the democrat perriello, which embodies the biggest concerns he talks about -- the federal government which she views as creeping socialism taking over the country. -- he views as creeping socialism taking over the country. he also has to run against robert hurt. robert hurt does not want to allow him into the debate. they're still working out whether or not he will be included in the candidate forums from now on are not. it is difficult for him being the only poll shows that perriello is down by 20-some points. and that robert byrd has a

sizable lead. that same poll two years ago showed perriello down by 30 points and he came back to win. if anything we know is that things can change quickly. it might be more competitive than it seems. >> you are watching public affairs programming on c-span. up next, an update on the u.s.- russia nuclear arms reduction treaty known as s.t.a.r.t.. after that, a look at the history of nuclear weapons. later we will hear from the muslim leader of the proposed an islamic center near ground zero. on tomorrow morning's "washington journal," a look at the tax package for small businesses with senate banking member mike johanns. we will speak with a texas congressman, henry cuellar, about border security. after that a discussion of education with tom luce.

"washington journal" is live every morning at 7:00 a.m. on c- span. later, a daylong conference on civil rights in the 21st century examining various aspects of civil rights policy in history. that is live at 11:00 a.m. eastern. now, a look at the nuclear arms treaty signed in april by obama and russian president dmitry medvedev. the measure must pass the senate by 2/3 majority to be ratified. the state department and georgetown university hosted this event.

>> is a pleasure to welcome -- it is a pleasure to welcome rose gottemoeller, richard burt, and david hoffman. let me say one important thing. it is always special to welcome back to graduate of georgetown university. especially a distinguished one like secretary gottemoeller who was a student in what used to be the school of languages and linguistics where she majored in russian. she also taught here at georgetown in the master of arts in chairman studies. -- german studies. it is a pleasure to have her back. out further ado, david. >> thank you. we have a live web cast.

i would like to say thank very much to the center for peace and security studies for cosponsoring this with the state department. i hope we will have a lively question and answer session today. both ambassador burt and secretary got miler -- gottemoeller experienced negotiators. my name is david hoffman and i am a journalist. i was a state department correspondent and finally, moscow bureau chief. for all those years i was trying to find out what these two w zero people were doing at the negotiating table -- two people were doing against the russians and some of the most important negotiations of our lifetimes. these negotiations have again produced another strategic nuclear arms treaty. this treaty will be considered in the coming days by the united states senate. the things we're going to learn about today are very topical and

important for decisions that the senate will be making soon. as the author of a recent book about the cold war, i am a big believer that history offers us many lessons for today. i hope we will have a chance to ask both of them about what those lessons are. they both have experience, not only in the issues on the table today and the current treaty, but of course 20 and 30 years or' worth of experience. -- years' worth of experience. when i first came to washington, i greatly anticipated what's groups -- what scoops mr. burt would have when he was an author -- journalist. here is what we will do. we will have a brief introductory mark -- remarks by each. then we will have discussion.

then we will open it up for questions and answers. first, ambassador burt, a brief introduction. >> thank you very much for that introduction, david. i cannot claim, like rose can, that i am a graduate of georgetown university. i can claim that my son played lacrosse for georgetown prep. [laughter] in some quarters in this region, that is more important, but certainly not on the campus of georgetown. in a way, we may have almost done this in reverse order. i am not going to try to steal roses under -- rose's thunder. she is the negotiator of the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty. in my view, and she will flesh

it out, there really should not be much debate about whether this treaty is in the u.s.'s interests or not. clearly, it is. it does not represent a giant step forward towards the goal of global zero -- the idea of eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide. but perhaps more importantly, it has put the united states and russia back on the road to making progress towards global zero. perhaps a creates momentum towards moving beyond simply -- it creates momentum towards moving beyond simply dialogue and to creating a more global or multilateral framework for

discussion in further arms reductions which could include china, india, pakistan, britain, france, and others. i would just emphasize this very strongly -- that should really be our goal. we should not look at arms control agreements, in my view, as justice series of episodic negotiations -- as just a series of episodic negotiations but part of a process leading to zero nuclear weapons worldwide. particularly, at the moment in international history when the real threat of nuclear weapons certainly does not stem from the likelihood or the possibility of a u.s.-russia -- u.s.-russian nuclear war, the threat is very different. it emanates from the growing number of failed states, the

weak states with weak governments, and the growing availability of nuclear technology. to give you one little thing to think about -- pakistan. here is a country with a government that is weak and increasingly faces a series of demands that it finds difficult to meet. a country where al qaeda exists. if they could, they would probably strike at the united states and other countries again. it is a country that has a stockpile of nuclear weapons. that is a kind of witches brooew to make us think about the real threat of nuclear weapons going forward, the further spread of nuclear weapons not too strong and stable states like the united states, but to a growing number of weak and unstable

states where not only could those states themselves use nuclear weapons in a crisis, but where those weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists. thinking about global zero and a long-term goals, we should see this agreement as a very important step to creating a process of coming to grips with this new age of nuclear danger. now, there is a kind of paradox to me, at any rate, about the debate in this town in the u.s. senate over this new s.t.a.r.t. treaty. this morning, because i could not remember the exact numbers, i went online and reminded myself of what the senate to vote -- senate vote on the treaty that i was involved in helping achieve in 1992 -- the

old s.t.a.r.t. treaty -- what was the votes? it was 92 to 5. there were only five u.s. senators that came out against that treaty. i am not going task rose to tell me -- ask rose to tell me how many senators she thinks will oppose this treaty. i do think it will be ratified sooner or later. i hope sooner. it will certainly generate more than five opposition votes. i am troubled by that. in 1992, of course, we were just ending the cold war. there was still, needless to say, after the experience of 40 years of distrust, of competition, paranoia between the united states and the soviet union -- one would have thought

that people would have been much, much more skeptical and concerned about supporting a treaty which called for things like on-site inspections, the first nuclear reductions on both sides. but there was not. it is paradoxical to me that, 20 years after the cold war, in a year when the russian federation supported the united states at the un security council on new sanctions against iran, in a year when the russians have been much more open and cooperative in helping us address our engagement and involvement in afghanistan, and in a period when the american and russian

presidents since the beginning of the obama administration have met 18 times and have publicly, together, called for the world wide elimination of nuclear weapons -- worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons -- there still seems to be opposition to this treaty. is there something wrong with the treaty? in my judgment, absolutely not. but it may indicate there is something wrong with our politics. do you want me to conclude here? i will. i will simply say that perhaps we need to take a look at our politics. not only at this functionality -- the dysfunctionality and lack of bipartisanship, but some is the -- some other issues we can be discussed in the q&a. >> rose, give us your perspective. >> thank you very much.

it is great to be back here on campus. one of the things that ambassador burt did not mention is that he used to be my boss. i will return to that in just a minute. i was a very low state department adviser on the s.t.a.r.t. i treaty in 1992 and 1993. i want to circle back to that in just a moment. i want to actually start a place where i have been told never to start -- to make an apology. it is an interesting apology. the reason i was a few minutes late, and i am sorry, was that i was up on capitol hill negotiating as part of the ratification process for the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty. it is a very intense discussion. as i got on the campus, lo and behold, who should i run into but senator lugar. i think he must of had some event here today. i asked him about his morning. he told me which senators he talks to.

i said, i hope they're all in a good mood. he said, let's keep them in a good mood. there is a great deal of momentum toward ratification of the new s.t.a.r.t. 38. -- s.t.a.r.t. treaty. there'll be a business meeting to consider the revolution for ratification. we are working hard to make sure that the senate has all the information that they need in order to give their advice and consent. it has been a very, very serious process and a very hard-working process. i worked all through the weekend as did my colleagues on capitol hill. everybody has in mind that this is a moment of momentum. we can move in a decisive way toward ratification of this treaty. we should grasp at that. i want to emphasize one message.

it is not only an historical moment in my view where our two parties -- democrats and republicans can come together to reach a decision on an historic step forward in our strategic arms reduction effort, toward moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons, but also a moment of an opportunity for profound bipartisanship. .

>> you go inside and look at the missiles there. how do you do that in a way again giving that kochs but not giing up sensitive secret information. boem koirpts have a concern about that. we were working hard on those issues at that time. the one i wanted to pick up on

is one rick already brought to your attention. >> part of that was a tough spot. figuring out how to do things. working on all these details

>> today, we are already down to 23,000 because the cold war is over. i'd like to ask you, what is so magic about this number of warheads you negotiated. >> rick also because you are affiliated. w why? what do we really need for american security. the president and broad speech talks about the division. some language i think hasn't been widely acknowledged or seen. he indicated that we really still have tomb.

is this really just a train stags stop or? really a big important end of itself. i'd like to hear both of you. >> if you know about the treat ys that piled up in addition to the start treat y which took the number of employed weapons down to 6,000. it was agreed we'd have operationally deployed in the range of this treaty. we knew that the start treaty was going out of force on

december 52009, we needed to have transition that will be in some ways much more challenging. president obama has already said next we move on to none deployed nuclear weapons. as soon as it enters into force or within 60 days of the change, this treaty can enter into force.

in that way, we will again work with the russians on further reduction. i suspect, we'll continue with further negotiations. we need to get cracking on that. >> i agree a lot with what rose has just said. when you ask what is the difference between 60,000 new cloe ar weapons. in my view not that much. you run out of targets more quickly than you run out of weapons. what is critical is the political question of when do you get down to a level when the rest of the world, particularly countries thinking about acquiring new cloe ar weapons

say, wow, those guys are serious about this process. they are really just charging their commitments they made in the 196 nuclear non-prolivation series. that's the crucial relationship that needs to be focussed on. if you don't mind, i would say my only real criticism is to not emphasize the relationship between new start and nuclear non-proliferation. what we have to do is demonstrate that the existing nuclear powers. the have countries understand that they have to reverse the

none deployed and strategic you create an environment and have a chance of bringing in the choin he's and indians and others

that's what i think we want to achieve. we have a chance to take a big step towards that goal. it seems like the doubts and senators and republicans give us a big enough majority

>> ronald reagan in particular. he was probably the first president. the first president that talked about eliminating nuclear weapons. he was extremely uncomfortable with having the authority to press a button that could lead to the death of millions of people he became as president very concerned about the u.s.

russian nuclear relationship. as soon as he found a partner he felt he could work with, he negotiated the treaty. those forces were completely eliminated he was the first president that didn't just negotiate the arms he was the first president who started the race process. that's another thing where in we lived with today. so many of these republicans within the senate who could question the treat y and vote against it.

they would say, yes. one of the interesting situations we are in today i don't think there is a single nuclear arms treaty ever ratified. under a democratic presidency. the first of the treaty and the offensive nuclear for theses the carter administration negotiated what was called fault ifrp i. it never went up to the senate. i was saying the treat y was ratified under the reagan administration and under the

bush administration. the go old fashion i have no doubt whatsoever if we had a republican administration this treaty would already be ratified >> one of the main debates going on about the budge etd for the nuclear weapons for the stockpile. over the last eight years, there was a great deal of difficulty

the budget for the national infa structure working hard on that. he would have killed to have this kind of budget. the obama administration has

been hitting hard. take some questions. i'd like you to identify yourself when you stand up.

it is imperative in order to advance the idea of how we resolve nuclear proliferation. i will say that the first set of steps was outlined.

the next steps were outlined in thepre am bell of the treaty. weapons and the storage facilities. we think we are going to work hard and move out on this next negotiation negotiations they are only one as secretary. it is very, very important that we show we are ready to move out on the rediction a agendas and

that we are really serious about it. just about every country today. it is our policy for the treaty to be a universal treaty. the countries also have to step forward and fulfill their obligation to be responsibly to the fuel cycle. that's why we are so concern abouted what iran is up to. why aren't they so skoop tiff in terms of saying that they are properly assured.

we are talking about a good part of the system. thinks don't happen unless there's public pressure to make them happen. deciding to do something and doing it, they need to feel pressure below.

other groups to promote these issues and a againeda so government feels the heat to do that. the fact of the matter. we are enormously lucky to be here today to talk about this new treat y. the fact is that he has pushed this. he made this a priority to

reevan gauge. you brought it up in their first meeting in london at the g 20 summit. i think i'm correct in saying he is the first president to ever chair a un council meeting. he convened the nuclear summit this last spring. preparing for support both here aboard and abroad.

it may prove to be a topic of discussion but not the prime purpose of it. they are getting under way to begin a joint subcommittee.

>> thank you to georgetown for holding this discussion today. mentioning comments about getting other countries to follow. the new treaty getting things around to mention and come into a ring of negotiations to get moral lies into the nuclear arms. >> one of the interesting affects we have already seen. to tell you the truth.

i wanted to note what rick had to say is really true from the period nuclear weapons was a big deal. since the end of the cold war, we have dealt with this problem. i wasn't sure when we negotiated this treat y, how much this would generate. . this was this positive buzz. they are back at the table moving out. trying to get something done in

this regard. wasn't able to reach consensus. there was a feeling that now we have the opportunity to move out on some of these issues. so, i hope that the affect will continue to work its magic on the scene. i'm not so naive to think it is going to follow every problem. that's why i think it's so important that the public and the general overall community continue to push on these issues. i welcome this opportunity today to bring together a couple of different groups here at georgetown. this is exactly the kind of ven u he talked about this issue.

he said the trouble is that when you have a certain amount. he said the best can be the enemy of the good.

it is part of our current strategy. >> that's a great question. he was at a generation of strategic thinkers who raise compelling questions like that. i do think there is some answer to this. that is that we are not talking about a technology or weapons system that can only be peaced by a magic circle or industrialized modern, large economy. it has been over 60 years since nuclear weapons has existed.

even in a zero nuclear weapons regime. if a country were somehow able to covertly develop weapons. they could not announce that they were the world's preeminent power.

we have the cape ability that's could take that out in a var ability. with a long range precision strike of weapons. in the process of carrying out weapons in people's lives. there are a lot of questions of getting to what i call the end game. there are other difficult problems you have to address. we have to dpin working on them. that is not a reason now for not advocating the goal and making a progress towards it. you can really in my judgement still have a situation of being able to threaten, unacceptable damage with less than 500 or so nuclear weapons. we still have too large of

nuclear arsenals. i haven't been able to detector see any real show stoppers that should lead us to conclude it is not a wornly goal. >> more questions, please. >> my question was for the u.s. secretary. i wanted to see if you could talk about any residence everybody vacations the administration has, if any. do you have a stronger sense of what will happen and the sense of what will be needed for the majority of senate. >> i'll repeat what we have before. we have a process going on.

it is very intense and active. the senate and staff are working very hard. senators are working hard for all the information they need. they have been getting to them all the information that they've been asking for to try to make sure they do have all the information they need. the reason i'm feeling optimistic is that we have a clear signal that he wants to bring this up at the business meeting on thursday. people are wrestling with this issue. you have probably heard this same report this morning that this is a new congressional season starting back from their

summer break. i vote to get a floor in a couple of weeks. as to the results, i think, well, it's still up in the air. the second mentioned modernization. it is one issue you have to chip

in in order to get a majority in the senate. modernization is complicated. the numbers are difficult. to sit down and try to find a solution might be very difficult.

not to modernize in that category? >> what i wanted to say is that increasingly, the lines and the strategic weapons would be endured. whether a warhead is considered a tactical or strategic weapon depends on what the delivery is. those differences are becoming blurred. i think we are entering a stanl

as we contemplate the next negotiation where we have a single basket. i'm not sure that your proposal in that regard works thinking about reductions. one area where it will be important to work sooner rather than later not only with the russians but the nato allies will be on upping the level of mutual confidence. i think it could be in a possible early stage to pursue

>> on this technical question, the answer, if this were a question posed to the united states, i think you'd get a rousing yes. the us surface fleet has been destabilized. the problem is russia. we don't really know or

understand how many of these weapons they have. at least 2,000, maybe double that. the problem on the russian side as expressed to me by senior military officers is that they are not so concerned about deploying these weapons but they are concerned about china.

this is an area where the united states has a big advantage. >> thank you both. i can i you can see why we have such great negotiators. our time is up. i'd like to thank everybody for coming. you can see the big news in the months and years on these topics. thank you so much. [applause] . flu

>> now a discussion on the history of nuclear weapons. we'll hear from thomas rustle. this is about an hour.

>> he has been around the government for a long, long period of time. i've known of ike for a long time. he's doing an outstanding job as president of our board of reegents. we have never been allowed to go behind closed doors. he really has a big smile on his face, always ongoing. we'll welcome mr. ike pino from santa fe. >> thank you for that nice introduction, governor. we were talking out in the hallway. so far we've learned today that

the bank regulators are going to put our community banks out of business in the next few months. we learned bullets are tlieg across and sitting city hall in el paso. he wanted me to announce that the swarm of locusts is on approach. we'll get a res pit from good news. dr. thomas hunter is go togs be speaking next. he is retired last month as president and laboratory director of the sandia national laboratory with primary sites in

california and new mexico managed by lockheed martin. he jointed sandi in 1967 and become president in 2005. his responsibilities included managing the budget and managing employees. 8400 employees. in may, the secretary appointed him to work on the team to deliver and an lice distributions to the bp oil spill. that work is continuing. se a member of the dpeering advisory board of the council in florida. american nuclear society.

the mind research network, u.s. strategic add voicery group, he has served as a member of chair of the dean of college of engineering at the university of california davis, guest lecturer at massachusetts institute of technology on nuclear waste management. the author of numerous technical papers, the resif sipent of the 2007 public service award and i cut out three paragraphs of this. a bachelor of science and engineering from the university of noer. an ms from new mexico and ms in

wisconsin and phd in nuclear engineering from the university of wisconsin. a man with this vast and varrid experience can speak on many thinks. today, he will discuss a strategic directive. i give you dr. thomas hunter. [applause] >> thank you for putting this all together. it's important to think what we

can do to make this country a better place. i want to acknowledge the person for whom this series has been named, that's the senator. in my various roles in the laboratory and across the nation, it has been an inspiration.

>> my title i guess is retired. the senators are all formers. i guess i could be a former laboratory director. as you heard, i was thinking about retiring gracefully and going into other things but i got chosen to spend the last four months working on the

effort down in the gulf trying to be sure the flow in the well was dropped. most of the time i did have a day job. one of the things i did, i signed a personal letter to the president of the united states saying this is the state of health of our nuclear deturnt. it was a personal statement. i and the other two laboratory directors signed it. it was anna so many responsibility to think deeply about what it means to have a deturnt and think about what the state of health is i'll try to

build on that and talk about some of the things mentioned. i'll begin with some comments from history. i hope to start in one place and end up in the same place. i want to start with the idea of what become known as the nuclear era and come back to what i think is the essence of maintaining that role in our place in the world. the history of new mexico was largely ridden around the war as well. i believe it will devour the

20th century into two halves. in the second 50 years, we had a different world there was no doubt about the war and conflict and suffering all over the place. let me begin with this science story. first, you know this.

one simple idea that came out that you've heard mentioned that says if you make very small changes, you can get enormous amount of energy. that's all ec equals means. the story goes on.

in 1932, james chad wick in england it all started in 1932 in an unpredictable way back comes energy. enormous amounts of energy.

the period of 19342 to 1959 was discovered. in addition to accruing a u.s. senator from new mexico. the breakthroughs were really revolutionary. hitler became chancellor and annexed austria.

>> in 1937 the invasion of russia. in 1937, the invasion of china. i am trying to bank a picture. it was not a bless and place in the world.

p.m. came here because this is a place of freedom. where that science can change the world. what actually happened. whoever got the secret to this would control the world.

>> trying to make a chain reaction work. everyone was trying to take what was pretty well understood science it's hard to imagine the time. i do think there's no way 20 and 45 in any way come together for 65. my story was i was born august 5, 1945. if you remember that date, it's almost her owe shima. some people say within a day. august 6 was in japan.

it was a time in which we could recognize today. we needed to enrich weapons. that's hard. it takes enormous amount of energy and skien tiff yik prowess. it took nine months to build first reactor. they had problems and needed high wiring to make it all work. copper was hard to get so they

got silver. do you know how much silver they got? 14,000 tons of silver. i guess they turn it had all back. the folks there saying we'll give it all back. the largest structure ever built was started in this time. all of this was because those skien sign sign